Crusoe's Island

by Andrew Lambert

  22

  A British Base in the Pacific

  While passing American sailors dreamed of Crusoe’s island, the British incorporated it into larger narratives of power and empire. The assumed ownership of the eighteenth century, recently revived by Thomas Sutcliffe, gained quasi-official status. The process began with a book: prompted by King William IV (1830–37), friend of Nelson and an enthusiastic if undiscriminating consumer of naval history, Admiralty Secretary John Barrow compiled the first biography of Anson. The treatment of Juan Fernández reflected a lifelong interest in geography and exploration, linking the great circumnavigator to Selkirk, and more recent voyagers like John Byron and Basil Hall. Barrow attributed Anson’s undying fame to his demonstration of all the qualities requisite in a great naval commander, above all moral courage and equanimity in the face of disaster. He used the loss of the Wager and subsequent mutinies, along with references to the chaos that followed the sack of Paita to stress Anson’s attention to discipline as a critical stage in the creation of the modern navy. He made Anson the exemplary naval leader, and a model of leadership for the rising generation.

  Barrow began the process of totemising the horrific expedition; after a century the sheer scale of human misery could be quietly set aside, reclaiming the voyage for a very Whiggish version of the Royal Navy’s history, one in which the present happy position of global pre-eminence flowed from centuries of heroic endeavour. By reducing six hundred scorbutic dead to necessary sacrifices to the cause Barrow made Anson’s voyage a fit subject for trophies, memorials and antiquities. Indeed he wrote a great deal more about the figurehead of the old Centurion than he did about her suffering crew. When the famous ship was broken up King George III gave the 16-foot-tall figurehead, a lion rampant, to the Duke of Richmond, who placed it on a pedestal at Goodwood. Years later William IV ‘recovered’ the trophy, installing it in a commanding position at Windsor Castle. Eventually Queen Adelaide persuaded the old sea captain that it belonged in the Anson Ward at the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich.1 By no coincidence Barrow’s biography found its way into the ward rooms of most British warships, including those sailing to the Pacific.

  After two decades of relative calm, the South Pacific returned to the centre of British interest in the early 1840s, when France and the United States pushed into the vast informal empire of trade and communication run from London. In April 1842 Rear Admiral Richard Thomas, commanding the Pacific Station, reported the arrival of a French frigate at Valparaiso, commanded by an Admiral with Pacific experience, carrying a governor, 130 troops and all the apparatus of a colony. Then the French headed off into the wide ocean, destination unknown. Three more ships were expected, and more troops. ‘Rumours assign different destinations to this expedition’, Thomas wrote. He discounted an attempt to settle part of New Zealand, favouring ‘some of the islands in the Pacific, or some part of the coast of Upper California’.2 Soon after, he learned the French had seized Tahiti. Elsewhere the Americans were consolidating their hold on Hawaii and attempting to filibuster Mexican California. These unwelcome developments suggested the next commander in chief should be a man of decision, well-connected to the ministry, and backed by a larger force.

  When Rear Admiral Sir George Seymour left the Admiralty Board in May 1844 for the Pacific command he had effectively written his own orders. Furthermore he was strikingly well connected with the higher echelons of aristocratic society and the Tory party, and his social pretensions were backed by professional merit. His station was bounded by Cape Horn, the Antarctic Circle, the Bering Straits and the 170th degree west.3 Given the vast distances that would separate the flagship from London, his orders were necessarily expansive and advisory. Expected to use his judgement on most questions short of declaring war, his tasks were to uphold British interests across the region, calling at the many islands and harbours where British traders might be found, and above all promote British commerce.

  Seymour’s command would be punctuated by a dispute about the American–Canadian border in the northwest – the Oregon Crisis, the French annexation of Tahiti and the Mexican–American War, events that focused British attention on the region. While the diplomatic exchanges have been studied, the strategic assessments produced by Seymour and the Admiralty, which included a base at Juan Fernández, have been largely ignored.

  As a competent professional, Seymour read himself into the new job on the outbound voyage, consulting Vancouver’s narrative, along with recent accounts of the Oregon country, American naval preparations and their turbulent, grandstanding political process. He quickly realised the Royal Navy had no reason to leave Valparaiso for Juan Fernández, or any other insular location, at least not in peace time. Valparaiso, the most important commercial port on the west coast of South America, had ample supplies of food, coal and regular steam communications back to London. The attention he paid to offshore islands reflected a desire to be prepared, rather than any ambition to seize. While the French and Americans kept out of Chile, and avoided the very narrow list of vital British interests, there was every prospect that the islands would slumber on, with little more than the occasional visit to betray the deeper thoughts of the Admiralty. Rumours that the United States planned to seize an island base on the south coast of Chile prompted a flurry of interest late in 1847, but proved groundless.4 Although the Oregon Crisis would be resolved by forceful diplomacy, Seymour decided to check out a key location, just in case.

  NOTES

  1 Barrow, The Life of George, Lord Anson, pp. 393, 418–19.

  2 Thomas to Admiralty, Valparaiso, 16 April 1842, rec’d 28 July 1842: ADM 1/5512.

  3 Admiralty to Seymour, 25 July 1844: ADM 172/4.

  4 F. Merk, The Oregon Question: Essays in Anglo-American Diplomacy and Politics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1967, esp. pp. 2116–394; Gough, The Royal Navy and the Northwest Coast of North America, pp. 70–2. Thomas to Admiralty, 23 April 1842, Callao rec. 28 July 1842: ADM 1/5512 on steam ships. Foreign Office to Admiralty, 1 November 1847: ADM 12/477, cut 51 25.

  23

  The Admiral’s Picnic

  On 5 December 1847, Seymour’s flagship, the eighty-gun Collingwood, arrived off Juan Fernández. The most powerful British ship to have graced those waters for a century dropped anchor in Cumberland Bay that evening, having made a few short tacks to fetch the anchorage. Not for her the smashed beak-head, frayed rigging and ill-set sails that marked the Centurion’s wretched approach. Where the Centurion had staggered in, reeking and foul, dead men laying in their own filth, rats everywhere, Sir George expected the flagship to match his own spotless style: the Collingwood was a thing of beauty. Even the crew had to be handsome: two ugly midshipmen had been dispatched to other vessels.1

  Collingwood was both Sir George’s flagship and his home. His wife and three daughters lived on board for large parts of the commission. Such domesticity provided a major element in the floating theatre of British Empire. While the British had no possessions closer than New Zealand they exerted enormous influence, essentially an informal empire, over the newly independent states of South America. While Juan Fernández had no significance for British regional trade or investment, and precious few people, the admiral was curious. A diversion to the magical island of Crusoe and Lord Anson would be a pleasant change from the endless round of civic functionaries, pushy consuls and grasping merchants. He could dispense with formalities and enjoy himself. He brought the family along, as any good paterfamilias would, to enjoy the view.

  From his elevated position on the quarter deck Commander Philip Somerville, struck by the ‘bold’ scenery, reflected the island was ‘remarkable for Lord Anson’s having put in when scurvy attacked and carried off so many of his men’. The British battleship found the Chilean brig Janequeo at anchor, the two ships having raced across from Valparaiso. Having moored and furled sails the large kedge anchor was laid out to secure the ship against Shelvocke’s storm. The following day the pinnace went ashore to begin watering,
the British were astonished when the tenuous local community demanded payment. On 8 December one watch of sailors were allowed ashore to wash their clothes and hammocks, exploiting the water supply at source. Once the Chilean ship had departed British attitudes subtly shifted, from visit to occupation: they began by conducting great gun exercise, firing at a mark set up on shore. On the 10th the second watch took their turn ashore to wash and mend while the upper deck batteries were exercised before lunch. The 11th saw the men turn to and clean the lower deck. Sunday 12th was devoted to divine service. On the 14th the Royal Marines and small arm men from the ship’s company went ashore to exercise firing at a mark, while the midshipmen were given a chance to practise with the ship’s six-pounder field gun. All of this occurred on the sovereign territory of a foreign power. The following morning more gun drill was followed by the normal ritual of departure, weighing the kedge, shortening the cable, crossing the royal topgallant yards and hosting in the boats. At 2.30 on 15 December, having left ample time for the men to eat, the anchor was raised and the Collingwood sailed out of the bay on a light south-southeasterly breeze, the prevailing wind in those quarters.2

  On the first day at anchor a party of junior officers had gone ashore to ramble; one of them did not return. Among the handsome, well-connected boys that graced the admiral’s quarter-deck, fourteen-year-old James Graham Goodenough was on his first voyage.3 Scrambling through the dense undergrowth Goodenough had fallen into a ravine. Despite a sprained wrist and other injuries he managed to yell a warning to his friend Clements Markham. With night coming on Markham rushed back to the ship to get help, leaving Goodenough on a ledge half way down the ravine.4 The next morning Goodenough, battered and bruised, crawled out and met Admiral Seymour, who had come ashore to search for one of his prized young men. Goodenough recovered from his ordeal, rising to prominence in the Victorian Navy.5 Thirty years later he made another ill-advised run ashore on a Pacific Island. He landed on Santa Cruz, as Commodore of the Australian Station, on 11 August 1875. The locals had a bad reputation, and they did not disappoint. Goodenough was hit in the side by a ‘poisoned’ arrow, six others were similarly wounded. Tetanus set in, and he died on 20 August. Two seamen shared his fate. While the Victorians deified Goodenough as an exemplary Christian Martyr, that identity has come under increasing scrutiny from Pacific historians more concerned with the other side of encounter.6 Ownership and possession were complex issues; they had a nasty habit of biting the unwary. Goodenough was unusual only in finding this out on more than one occasion. His companion on the earlier ill-starred ramble ashore, Clements Markham, long outlived him, becoming a historian of Spanish exploration in the Pacific, before sending Captain Scott to another kind of heroic death.

  The casual use of Chilean territory to resupply the water tanks may have violated Chilean sovereignty, as did literally bombarding the shores of Cumberland Bay with shot and shell, and then landing a small army to occupy the ground and continue firing, it but it was entirely consistent with time-honoured British attitudes. Despite the Chilean flag, and Chilean inhabitants, Juan Fernández remained defiantly ‘British’, a tiny green speck amid a vast British ocean, located at the heart of the defining sea-culture of a world power, one small part of a vast ‘informal empire’ that fuelled the explosive expansion of British trade and prosperity at the mid-century. Global power, cemented by victory over Napoleon, may have changed British attitudes, but Juan Fernández had been ‘British’ for close on two hundred years, a location that connected the Victorians to their heroic, not to mention piratical precursors. The island occupied a privileged place in their mental world, a world in which Crusoe was familiar to every literate Briton, while anyone with a smattering of education could pick up the stories of Selkirk and Anson.

  Philip Somerville recorded his reading habits, reflecting a serious attempt to master the island’s fascinating history. His ardent evangelical faith and Freemasonry, Anglo-Irish identity and introspection made him a curious witness to the more exotic aspects of Pacific life. While lamenting the licentious behaviour of native women Somerville never described what he had seen, or the all too human feelings that such sights excited. Recourse to a stiff lecture on self-improvement the following morning at least had the quality of consistency. While the ship’s library may have been exiguous, and individual officer’s collections somewhat restricted by lack of space, Admiral Seymour had the money and shelves for a superior reference collection. Somerville, his constant companion over the chess board during the long, slow evenings of Pacific voyaging under sail, had ample opportunity to borrow.7 He read Pacific voyages by Fitzroy and Darwin, Wallis, Cook, and Anson. Nor was he the only officer keeping a journal.

  While Somerville wrote for private reflection, his friend and shipmate Lieutenant Frederick Walpole was altogether more ambitious. Walpole came from distinguished stock, a younger son of Horatio, third Earl of Orford and a descendant of Sir Robert Walpole, the first prime minister. These political connections may have secured him a berth on Seymour’s Tory ship. It would be his last sea service; he ended his days as a member of Parliament.8 He had sailed with Somerville half a decade before, when the older man mentored him through a difficult period.

  Walpole did not record what he read, but we can safely assume that he shared texts and discussed the distant lands they visited, from San Francisco to Hawaii by way of Tahiti, Mazatlan and Lima with Somerville. ‘Fredk Walpole came in while I was writing this [his journal] and had a chat. He is a nice young fellow and a great favourite of mine’, and ‘a host in himself’.9 These discussions shaped the way they responded to the Pacific, and the island. They help to explain not only what they reported, but also the complete omission of routine activities. Similarly, Somerville’s influence may explain the absence of salacious detail from Walpole’s record of the cruise.

  Among the many Juan Fernández texts that Somerville read, the most recent, and among the most effusive, was Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast.10 He was equally familiar with Carteret’s voyage, which he read for information on the hot topic of Tahiti, while taking occasional detours for a literary encounter with other regions, including a European grand tour taking in Germany, Austria, Belgium and northern France, and another exploring Egypt and Nubia. Naval voyage narratives were staple fare; recent examples with local connections included those by Philip Parker King, Robert Fitzroy, Edmund Belcher, and Frederick Beechey, along with Thomas Sutcliffe’s pamphlets. Taken with a solid diet of improving evangelical tracts and texts on the emerging Tahitian imbroglio, such books shaped the way they responded to the voyage.

  Walpole’s Four Years in the Pacific, published in 1849, included a lyrical chapter on the island. Having come unwillingly from the fleshpots, clubs and excursions of Valparaiso, the ship’s officers were not disposed to enjoy their offshore venture, and found little to lift their spirits when they first caught sight of the ‘poor barren rock’. Unlike Anson’s men, they were in fine health, well fed and definitely not scorbutic; consequently Juan Fernández took a little time to work its magic. As they came closer the ‘fine, bold appearance’ and then the ‘verdant valleys’ offered a more pleasing prospect, while a ‘clear, sparkling’ waterfall ‘positively made me long to explore’.11 Even the ruins of the last prison settlement were scenic.

  Returning to his books, Walpole quickly situated himself in the history of this strange place, getting his bearings by retrieving those of Selkirk, Anson, Defoe and Dampier. The island of mystery and romance gripped Walpole’s imagination, mixing personal observations with things recorded, or merely ‘said to be’. Officers and men went ashore, with various agendas: to take in the scenery, fish, forage for fresh food, or simply wash their clothes in fresh water.12 Soon the island echoed with English voices. The Chilean occupants, a single extended family, scratched out an existence raising cattle, apparently too idle to cultivate the soil.13 Walpole also found an American Crusoe, ‘left by some ship for reasons probably not creditable enough to be
related truly’. He expressed himself contented with his lot, and said he made money by selling firewood and goat’s flesh to the whalers, and by guiding them on their shooting excursions. Hunting goats with a pack of dogs was ‘one of the things necessary to be done on the island’. Used to well-bred packs of fox-hounds, Walpole was distinctly unimpressed by the canine assets on offer, and set off alone. Soon he was lost in rapture, amid ‘scenery of the wildest beauty’ and ‘vegetation of the most vigorous growth’:

  Here you rambled in the cool shade, a stream of purest water by your side – there banks of the sweetest thyme invited to response, while vistas, glen, and peak, seemed placed but to be admired. Flowers clustered round you, and the humming-bird, darting from bush to bush, his varied plumage sparkling in the sun, enlivened the whole. Our noble ship in the bay spoke highly for the ingenuity of man, but the eye turned with delight to the freshness and beauty of nature.14

  Older buccaneer romances about an edible world had been replaced by the reveries of a well-fed tourist. While Walpole praised the usual culinary delights of fish and flesh, echoing lines on the singular ease of fishing, he doubted the old story about Selkirk goats with slit ears. Collingwood’s officers enjoyed goat flesh with mint sauce, ‘eaten as lamb’. Suitably rested and restored by the time the flagship sailed, the ship’s company had taken a good harvest of local fish. The resourceful Somerville stowed some live crayfish for his friends in Valparaiso.15

  Inspired by the wonders of nature, the isolation of the island or the realisation that his audience would expect comprehensive coverage of Robinson Crusoe’s residence, Walpole rambled across many a page, describing the beauty and abundance of Juan Fernández. He left the story suitably opaque, reviving an old debate about the real author of Crusoe, indulging the suitably aristocratic notion that no mere hack journalist could have written it; with Robert Harley, Lord Oxford, promoter of the ‘South Sea Bubble’, as his preferred candidate. Whoever wrote it, ‘the work is so truthful, it were worse than sceptical to doubt it’.16